


The polished column

by faceofstone



Category: Le città invisibili | Invisible Cities - Italo Calvino
Genre: Gen, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2019-02-19 20:35:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13131669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faceofstone/pseuds/faceofstone
Summary: That's just the way of history in Berenice, and of politics, and of the arts: they ebb and flow.





	The polished column

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Quillori](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quillori/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide, and thanks for a past kindness :)

A monumental column looms over Berenice's main square, standing tall like a lighthouse. 

By decree of the newly elected Consul Amilcare, whom circular historians would come to remember as Amilcare the Corrupt, the column was built bare, and smooth, sanded with the finest grain, a marble pillar as polished as a mirror to reflect a new government which would hide nothing to its people.

 

(Amilcare raised a symbol that hid nothing so that he and his cohort could hide behind it. A story as old as time - from the column's sole existence, circular historians have posited that others of its ilk must have been planted on this same ground through ages immemorial, reaching back to an ur-column, likely a menhir, in the days before the name Berenice was ever imposed on the land, when the first men and women were draped in animal hides and their sense of justice first draped a bubbling injustice underneath.)

 

Merchants were sent with Amilcare's gold to Euphemia's distant shores, to find marble fit for the City of the Just. Having passed on to Euphemia's traders the tales of the consul's victory in the elections, they came back hoisting black sails, mourning the loss of Berenice's democracy to a bloodied war. Thus, months later, in secret, long before secretary Ippolito took his first bribe, they were the first to deface the column with a deep diagonal gash that could be seen from afar, showing all travelers that Berenice's integrity was no more. By the time treasurer  Gioacchina was caught colluding with the banks, a resistance had formed, made of valiant, just citizens who would brave the police's surveillance and mark the column each time the government covered a misdeed with lies.

 

A web of of gashes was laid bare like an open wound by the time Amilcare III was deposed. It was a time for celebrating, so sculptors were called from all districts of the city to turn those lines into boughs and leaves, and lovers were invited to carve their names into the column. In time, marble birds flew and rested among those boughs, and fantastical fruits were added under its leaves. When the new government needed to make a statement to mark their distance from The Corrupt and its façade of austerity, the column was filled with yet more bas-reliefs: figures inside figures, geometric motifs, entire poems carved around the old lovers’ names, stories of stone spreading across the circumference. The Academy declared the miniature to be the new artistic triumph: a modern man's refined taste was demonstrated by the hoarding of fine and minute carvings, none taller than an inch - naturally, the column of Berenice, the city's symbol, was to be the most refined monument of all, adding layer upon layer of intricate details until its artistry was observable only from up close.

 

*

  
  


En route to the harvest festival of Lydia, Saveria, whose great-great-great-grandfather was one of the merchants sent to Euphemia and who had vowed never to return home under the tyrant, coasts for the first time the home of her ancestors. She douses her sail, taking in the sight of Berenice's bustling docks; filled with a longing that runs deep in her blood, she wonders if the city has ever broken free of its yoke.

But beyond the docks, far and imposing, Amilcare's column still stands proud at the center of it all, tall like a lighthouse, bare, immaculate, smooth under the sun. Saveria sighs and sets sail toward the open sea.


End file.
